>> mike schmidt, it's a great point about roger stone. you can almost hear donald trump's -- if roger stone is to be indicted as a lot of people suspect he may be, you can almost hear the white house response, well, he was hardly involved. we hardly knew him. but you've reported that mueller has questions for the president about wikileaks. one of the questions that mueller has as they've shared with his lawyers is for the president, what did you know about communications between roger stone, his associates, julian asank sange or wikileaks. this goes straight to their questions about what the president knew about this effort, this russian effort to help the trump campaign. >> that's the big question that hangs over this that we don't have an answer to. what did the president know about this? did he have any advanced knowledge from stone, from anyone nels the campaign about what was to come? and there's these major questions that still hang over the investigation. that being one of them that, you know, mueller is still looking at. how much

mike schmidt, let's start with you. take us through what you and your colleagues are reporting about the president working on his answers to questions from robert mueller. >> yeah, so what was the president's outburst really about? and we're still trying to figure that out here. but what's going on is they are trying to finish the answers to the questions. we're nearly a year into the negotiations between mueller's office and the president's lawyers. and we still haven't come to some determination on information going from trump to the investigators. and we thought we would have that this week. we thought that the president would send his stuff in writing. remember, the president's lawyers very concerned that if he actually sat down with mueller that he would say something that was not accurate and he would increase his criminal exposure. so the answers were supposed to go this week. it doesn't look like they're going to go. why is it that the president is so upset? is he simply upset because there are questions in ther

let me pull mike schmidt into this. is this consistent with what you and your colleagues are reporting about the management of the special counsel investigation? and it's my understanding that a lot of these things have been in motion for months. many, many months and weeks, even before matt whitaker assumed his new role. >> the way that it works is the deputy attorney general oversees, you know, all major investigations. everything sort of goes through that office. the difference before under jeff sessions was that there was not someone above rod rosenstein because jeff sessions was recused. in this case, whit skaker is no recused, at least not yet but the same structure exists. rosenstein is still the deputy attorney general and all investigations still pass through his office. the difference is that on major, major, major decisions there's another desk that a decision could go to and that would be to the acting attorney general's desk. i guess by this reporting it shows that that has not happened yet. but rosenstein,

. >> joining us now, mike schmidt from "the new york times," mike schmidt, you cover the clinton e-mail story how did the republicans on the intel committee, how did they latch on to this issue and unearth what turned out to be some -- some, you know, controversial and classified material on her e-mail server, and is it possible that e vauiva with her foreign policy portfolio, presence on the world stage, donald trump left her in a chair at a summit and she poke in saudi arabia, she's been to the wall in israel she certainlyhas a lot of foreign policy in her portfolio as well. >> what tripped up clinton, sent a letter to the inspector ge eor general for the intelligence community and said, hey, go look at clinton's server and see if it there's any classified information there. the thing about the intelligence community, it's not hard for them to find classified information. a lot of things are classified and they got under the hood and saw classified information and they told the fbi and that's where the problem started. so the question will be here, what will the house democrats do tha

from "the washington post," phil rucker, from "the new york times," reporter mike schmidt, associated press white house reporter jon nathan lemire, fra figliuzzi, chuck rosenberg, former u.s. attorney and former senior fbi official. and on set, john heilemann, nbc news and msnbc national affairs analyst and co-host and executive producer of "the circus" on showtime. chuck rosenberg, i'm going to you on all things robert mueller. this was always going to be a precarious time. donald trump, whether feeling backed into a corner by democratic gains or emboldened by republican gains and as only trump could be both in one moment he seems to be. but the concern was always going to be the fate and future of the mueller probe. my understanding it's now likely in the hands of a staunch trump ally, a person more a political figure than respected legal mind and someone who has written openly about his concerns and displeasure with the duration and the direction of mueller's probe. >> that's right, nicolle. you've characterized it fairly. you don't get to be the acting attorney general and oversee

. >> mike schmidt, take us through what you and your colleagues have reported last night about the president's flow of information from manafort's lawyers, even after manafort had agreed to cooperate and i guess a nonlawyer would assume that meant be helpful to the mueller probe. that wasn't the case. >> yeah, so there was a pipeline from kevin downing, manafort's lawyer, to rudy giuliani. and this really helped give the president's legal team insight into what was going on. and this also helped certainly led to the president becoming agitated. the president knew that the prosecutors were really hammering on manafort. and specifically on the question of the trump tower meeting. what did they -- they were going to manafort and saying, what did the president know about this? did he know about it before? did he know about it afterwards? and what giuliani says is that, when they got answers from manafort that they didn't like, when manafort said he didn't know anything about this, he put him back in solitary confinement and kept him there for four days. it's not the prosecutor's decision to keep h

our friend mike schmidt over at "the new york times" says this is all about sound and fury. it's all about softening the ground on public opinion, public perception, because they know the territory we're about to drive into. do you concur? >> yeah. there's a notable lack of commentary from team trump on this in the leadup to the elections. they're over. also we have to note that trump has submitted his written answers. so the expectation is that we're in the winding down stages of this investigation now that his answers are in. and they've been fairly up front about their desires to muddy the waters here. rudy giuliani has talked about putting out a secondary report that they will author that will compete theoretically with the mueller report although it looks like it's mostly going to be press clippings. they've talked about their desire to actually fight the mueller report's release. and they've been very up front about their desire to paint mueller as a partisan hitman to get the president staffed with i think he called them 13 angry democrats. this is all a concerted eff

mike schmidt, phillip rucker, kimberly atkins, frank figliuzzi.hael, we have been quoting a piece of reporting you did earlier this year that has come roaring back and become so important, and that was when mr. dowd, the long-time washington lawyer, worked for donald trump, the notion that he was mentioning, dangling, giving the briefest credence to perhaps a commutation or a pardon to people. remind us what you reported then, why it's so important right now. >> there were discussions many, many months ago, last year, between dowd and lawyers for mike flynn and paul manafort. mike flynn being the former national security adviser who pled guilty to making false statements in this investigation. and obviously manafort. and that is something that mueller has been looking at himself. mueller was looking at the question of why is it that the lawyer was offering a pardon? why was he discussing a pardon? it was among the 49 questions that mueller wanted to ask the president, that had fallen to the obstruction bucket. that was not in the responses the pre

. >> and kudos to mike schmidt and maggie havreman for pulling this out. it points to this enemies list. not just a political problem, but a legal problem ultimately for this preponderate if herpe in some other capacity acting on this. they are unsure as to whether or not the president circumvented white house counsel and has installed other people in certain places with respect to legal structure of the united states that may be undertaking some of these investigations already, rather surreptitiously. if that's true that presents a much larger political problem than what we know from yesterday's reporting. >> meantime, shannon, i do want to talk about something you've reported on, the president submitting written answers to mueller's questions, but refusing to answer anything related to his time in office, or allegations of obstruction of justice. so where does that leave the investigation? where does the investigation go from here? >> well, i mean, the next steps will probably be that the president's lawyers submitted these questions late yesterday. robe

. >> mike schmidt, the creator as far as we know of the bucket theory of the mueller investigation and the co-author of today's piece of work by "the new york times." the. mike, thanks for staying up with us. we know it's been a long day. thank you for being on the broadcast again. let's go to our panel to start off, and that would be frank. frank, tell me how it is that mr. stone can rightfully contend that he has taken and passed a lie detector test? tell me how it is he can contend with such surety that he was never in touch with any russians on the other side. >> well, a lie detector test is garbage in, garbage out. so, the questions have to be the right questions. so, if you're paying for your own lie detector test, you can pay for the right questions to be asked, and you have the right answers to those right questions. if the examiner is asking you, did you ever talk to anyone at wikileaks, and the true answer is no, you're okay. you can say no. but he's not asking you the questions that really matter, like, were you in contact with the russians who were in contact with wikileaks

. >> well, i have been struck over time listening to our friend mike schmidt from "the new york times" talk about the fact these questions have been known. they've not changed for many months and this negotiation has dragged on for so long that the hold-up here is clearly, it's not like the goal posts are moving. there are, obviously, mueller's accumulating new facts all the time. the basic things he's interested in have been the things he's been interested in for a very long time. and it suggests if the president, to your point earlier. he has an easy way out, which is tell the truth. it's true that's the easy way out if all you're trying to do is avoid perjury. he's clearly not trying to avoid perjury. if the facts are incriminating, he has no easy way out. he can either lie and risk perjury charges or tell the truth and incriminate himself if the facts are incriminating. part of the reason why this negotiation has taken so long has been there's been a lot of political gamesmanship involved here and the president wanted to drag it out past the midterms to see what position. would re

"the new york times" reporter mike schmidt whose byline got a big new development in the mueller probe we'll be getting to soon. and aaron blake for "the washington post." not on the mueller probe, on the president's conduct vis-a-vis the justice department. let me start with you joyce and chuck. the chief justice of the supreme court issuing what was a rare criticism of the president of the united states on his unprecedented attacks on the federal judiciary and the president responding on twitter moments ago. joyce? >> is that for me first? >> yes. >> so this is an extraordinary moment to have the chief justice who has shown impeccable restraint in the face of criticism of the judiciary, who has refused to enter the fray. who finally feels the need to make sure that the american people understand what all of us as lawyers know, which is that the judiciary is independent. it's strong. federal judges don't think of themselves in terms of the president who appointed them. but they buildielieve they ther to uphold the rule layoff and leave their politics at the door when they enter the co

we have mike barnacle, alesse jordan, kimberly atkins, michael schmidt and joyce advance. joe and mika have the morning off. good morning to all of you. let's dive right in. just days after we learned the special counsel wants to scrap paul manafort's plea deal, president trump is now publicly discussing a possible pardon for his former campaign chairman. in an oval office interview, president trump left open the possibility of a pardon telling the paper, it was never discussed, but i wouldn't take it off the table. why would i take it off the table? in that interview, the president criticized robert mueller's investigation claiming that manafort, roger stone, and stone associate jerome corsi were all asked to lie. if you tell the truth, you go to jail, trump said. you know this flipping stuff is terrible. but i had three people, manafort, corsi, i don't know corsi, but they refuse to say what he demanded. it's actually very brave, the president said, of the trio and i'm telling you, this is mccarthyism. we are in the mccarthy era. this is no better than mccarthy, says the

with us now, michael schmidt of the "new york times." mike equal, big headline, big story. what's the importance of it? the importance of it is the insight into how donald trump sees the justice department. he sees the justice department as a tool, shouldly, to figure out the political problems that he has. he believes and has said privately and at times publicly that the attorney general is someone that should work for him, that should be loyal to him, that should put his interests first. and this is sort of along those lines. it's about using the justice department to fix political problems that he has. trump ultimately does not is order the justice department to prosecute these folks. he did not have that authority and he did not ask them, at least that we know of, through the white house counsel to investigate them. but he was warned about the problems of this and that there could be significant blow back. and the interesting thing about how this all fits together is that trump did this. he explored the idea at a time when he was under investigation for obstruction of j

mike allen has a look at this morning's one big thing. then the backlash of the president's support of saudi arabia after the killing of jamal khashoggi. >> plus, michael schmidtombshell report over the president's bid tot' prosecute hillary clinton d james comey. "morning joe" is moments away. c. "morning joe" is moments away. ♪ ♪ the united states postal service makes more holiday deliveries to homes than anyone else in the country. ♪ with one notable exception. ♪ >>> welcome back. joining us from washington to look at axios a.m., co-founder mike allen. mike, what is the one big thing this morning? >> happy getaway day and the axios one big thing is behind the scenes trump v. mueller. so after president trump's team hand delivered those answers to robert mueller yesterday, we had a long conversation with his lawyer, rudy giuliani. rudy giuliani told jonathan swan that he doesn't think mueller will follow this up with a subpoena. there were no answers here to questions about whether or not the president object vukted justice which is a big potential issue for mueller. but rudy giuliani tells us that he thinks the special counsel would not win that battle, whi

eric schmidt, state treasurer for them, how many times have you seen the president come to missouri for the republicans question mikeimes, he has been to missouri ten times now because this is such a consequential state. it is going to be a great race. he won just a few years ago. josh hawley was attorney general, he won by about the same margin. he was in southeast missouri just yesterday, and the crowd was really excited. so we are expecting good things. >> i think last night he said the midterms used to be boring. now they are the hottest thing around. >> it is exciting. >> this woman right here, i know bret and martha, you were talking about the long lines. there was a problem with that -- there was a snafu. she had to call the aclu. it took you how many hours to vote? >> two hours. >> ultimately you were able to vote. you voted for -- >> claire mccaskill. >> why was it clear over josh? >> it was claire mccaskill, but it was more so the amendment. >> it has to do with medical marijuana. i have to tell you a lot of people are talking about that. what is your name? >> sarah. >> you just saw my tweet. so have you v